Democracy Now!

The U.S. House has passed landmark legislation that amends the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected groups. The Equality Act extends discrimination protections for LGBTQ people at the workplace, in housing, education, among other areas. This is Democratic Congressmember Mondaire Jones of New York —… »

Virginia is set to become the first State in the South to outlaw capital punishment, after lawmakers voted Monday to abolish the death penalty. Democratic Governor Ralph Northam has pledged to sign the legislation. Virginia has carried out nearly 1,400 executions since 1608, when it became the first British colony… »

The Senate has acquitted Donald Trump for inciting the deadly January 6 Capitol insurrection in his second impeachment trial. Fifty-seven senators backed convicting the former president, but the vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed. It was the most bipartisan impeachment trial verdict ever, with seven Republicans voting with… »

The State Department said Tuesday the U.S. will continue to push for the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain. Last month, a U.K. judge blocked Assange’s extradition, citing serious mental health concerns. Assange was indicted for violations of the Espionage Act related to the publication of classified documents… »

Countries across the African continent are facing a second COVID-19 outbreak, linked to a variant first found in South Africa that has been detected in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Comoros and Zambia and more than 20 non-African countries so far. There is concern new variants, which scientists believe are more infectious,… »

President Donald Trump broke with decades of U.S. foreign policy in the waning days of his administration and recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a territory the country has occupied since 1975 in defiance of the United Nations and the international community. U.S. recognition came as Morocco agreed to establish… »

President Joe Biden is signing three executive orders on immigration today. The first establishes a task force that will aim to reunite hundreds of asylum-seeking families separated by the Trump administration. The two other orders will look into Trump’s disruption of the asylum process, restore funding to Central American countries… »

The Biden administration has frozen U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and is examining sales to the United Arab Emirates, including the sale of Lockheed Martin F-35 jets, which were approved by the Trump administration as part of UAE’s normalization deal with Israel last year. The Biden administration has vowed… »

On his first full day in office, President Joe Biden unveiled a 198-page national plan to tackle the coronavirus pandemic as the U.S. death toll tops 410,000. He signed 10 executive orders to create a new national COVID-19 testing board, to help schools reopen, to mandate international travelers to quarantine… »

President Biden signed 17 executive orders Wednesday in his first official act from the Oval Office. Among other things, the orders strike down Trump’s ban on travelers from majority-Muslim nations, end construction of Trump’s border wall and strengthen DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for young immigrants. Biden rejoined… »